Chamber Society concert will end 10th season

Wednesday

Feb 24, 2010 at 4:22 PM

NEW BEDFORD — The final concert program of the South Coast Chamber Music Society's tenth anniversary season couples classic works in the chamber music repertory with exciting, is scheduled at 5 p.m. on Saturday March 20, at St. Gabriel's Church in Marion, and at 3 p.m. on Sunday, March 21, at Grace Episcopal Church in New Bedford.

NEW BEDFORD — The final concert program of the South Coast Chamber Music Society's tenth anniversary season couples classic works in the chamber music repertory with exciting, is scheduled at 5 p.m. on Saturday March 20, at St. Gabriel's Church in Marion, and at 3 p.m. on Sunday, March 21, at Grace Episcopal Church in New Bedford.

The concerts bring together the particularly rich sounds of piano, oboe, violin, and cello, all played by absolute masters of their art. SCCMS members Donna Marie Cobert, Piotr Buczek, and Timothy Roberts will be joined once again by pianist Janice Weber.

Ms. Weber, a member of the piano faculty at the Boston Conservatory and a teacher at Brandeis University, will be quite busy, soloing in Robert Schumann's Three Romances, Op. 28, and appearing as well in Mendelssohn's Piano Trio No. 1 in D Minor, Op. 49; Victor Emanuel Bendix's Andante for Oboe, Violoncello and Piano; and in Paul Schoenfield's Café Music for violin, cello, and piano.

The musicians are all particularly excited about playing Schoenfield's Café Music, which premiered in St. Paul, Minnesota, 1987. Trying to write what he called "a kind of high-class dinner music," Schoenfield wound up with a fascinating piece that manages to assimilate a wide range of early 20th century American, Viennese, light classical, gypsy, and Broadway styles, including a paraphrase of a beautiful Chassidic melody.

Café music, written in three movements, calls for virtuosic playing as it shifts dazzlingly from the exuberant to the serious, from stretches that recall jazz or Strauss waltzes or Dixieland to those that suggest klezmer music or the blues. Little wonder that critics have called Schoenfield "the new Gershwin," or have reached for adjectives like "Joplinesque," or "soulful," or "improvised."

What can be said about a concert that includes café music and rigorous classics like Schumann's haunting and energetic Three Romances, and Mendelssohn's Piano Trio, often described as one of his most popular chamber works. The Trio was reviewed by none other than Schumann, who declared Mendelssohn to be "the Mozart of the nineteenth century, the most illuminating of musicians."

Both concerts will be preceded by a talk on a relevant aspect of the performances by Anthony J. Lewis, Ph.D. The talk begins one half hour before the concerts, at 4:30 p.m. in Marion and at 2:30 p.m. in New Bedford.

Tickets may be purchased for $18 at the Bookstall on Front Street in Marion, at the Symphony Music Shop on Route 6 in Dartmouth, ordered in advance by calling (508) 295-2968, or at the door on the day of the concert. Persons aged 16 and under are encouraged and admitted free of charge. Both concert venues are wheelchair accessible.

For more information on SCCMS programs, ticket purchases, and directions, visit the website www.southcoastchambermusic.org or call (508) 295-2968.